Will the witching hour seen on markets at frequent intervals fall on the last Sunday of this electoral month rather than right at its end on Halloween? All eyes are on whether President Javier Milei wins or loses the upcoming midterms but first we must define our terms. Since neither victory nor defeat in any absolute sense are possible with overall Congress majorities out of reach when 178 of the 329 seats are not at stake while La Libertad Avanza (LLA) could hardly fail to improve on their last 2021 midterm haul of two deputies, what exactly would constitute a win?
To lay any claim to a positive result, pundits suggest that Milei would need to be the leading minority with at least 35 percent of the vote. The first objective looks like a done deal since LLA is the only nationwide contender. Fuerza Patria is representing Peronism in only 14 of the 23 provinces with electorates of moderate size in at least three of the other nine (Entre Ríos, Mendoza and Tucumán) – even repeating last month’s landslide in Buenos Aires Province would not make up the difference. Nobody else is in sight.
At first sight 35 percent of the vote also looks within reach since even the recent downward slide still does not place Milei’s approval ratings below 37 percent. Yet if we look at votes cast rather than opinion polls, LLA has garnered under 27 percent in the 10 local elections so far this year so some way still to go. Disenchantment is a reality but whether the disillusioned vote elsewhere or simply sit this election out would make a huge difference to that LLA percentage – impossible to forecast. One positive scenario for Milei would be a mirror of 2019 – with forecasts of an even contest, the PASO primary protest vote then gave a huge landslide to the Peronist Frente de Todos subsequently halved in the general elections while the crushing Buenos Aires Province win after also expecting a close result might spook voters now.
Little point in speculating further until much closer to election day but in this columnist’s opinion the either/propositions of polarisation might not tell the whole story. Inland the two national forces are up against provincial governments (whether in Provincias Unidas or flying solo) and even these do not call all the shots – if LLA polled 27 percent in the 10 districts voting so far, the ruling parties of those districts totalled 39 percent, leaving plenty of votes up for grabs. In this city both Milei and Peronism might undershoot – those voting for ex-Radical Leandro Santoro last May might find the Radical Martín Lousteau closer to that style than the leftist Itai Hagman, while many centre-right voters might see Ricardo López Murphy as more credible than the lacklustre libertarian candidates. In Buenos Aires Province the two leading candidates Jorge Taiana and José Luis Espert (quite apart from being the latest target of scandal) could hardly be duller or less representative.
The rest of this column will be devoted to giving closure to the Buenos Aires Province midterms last September 7 now that the final official results following recounts have become available. In a 61.04 percent turnout of an electorate of 14,376,592 voters (placing Buenos Aires Province in fifth place among the 10 districts voting so far), the Peronist Fuerza Patria was the runaway winner with 3,861,488 votes (47.35 percent) over the Alianza La Libertad Avanza (ALLA, teaming up with centre-right PRO) with 2,755,097 (33.78 percent). Far behind lagged the Radical-led Somos Buenos Aires (allied with dissident Peronists, Coalición Cívica-ARI and Socialists among others) with 518,720 votes (6.36 percent) and the leftist Frente de Izquierda y Trabajadores-Unidad (FIT) with 355,796 votes (4.36 percent). The remaining 757,529 valid votes were divided among 12 other lists with 619,746 blank or spoiled ballots – only three of those dozen other parties reached six digits with just over 100,000 votes each: two dissident libertarian lists Nuevos Aires (ex-Peronists backing Milei in 2023, only to frequently support Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof ever since) and Carlos Kikuchi’s Unión y Libertad, and María Eugenia Talerico’s Potencia offering a refuge for centre-right voters shunning Milei.
While those vote totals and percentages attracted the most attention in what was mostly seen as a plebiscite between Milei and Kicillof, the actual purpose of these midterms was to elect 23 provincial senators (in the 1st, 4th, 5th and 7th sections) and 46 deputies (in the 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 8th sections). No changes resulted from the final results and recounts – Fuerza Patria elected 13 senators and 21 deputies, ALLA 8 senators and 18 deputies, Somos two in each house and FIT two deputies while the three remaining deputies went to the San Nicolás-based Hechos list in a non-aggression pact with Somos in the 2nd section.
Winning in only two of the eight sections (the southern 5th and 6th) when expecting to lose in only two (the slum belt of the 3rd and the provincial capital of La Plata in the 8th) proved fatal to Milei’s hopes of claiming victory even when lagging behind in the popular vote. The government fancied its chances in the 1st (including the opulent northern suburb of Greater Buenos Aires) and the rural inland 2nd, 4th and 7th but the surprising loss of all four killed laying claim to more legislative seats than Kicillof even if less votes. Less imperialistic attitudes from the purple people towards third parties would probably have tipped the scales in all four cases. In the best Peronist performance of this century, the Fuerza Patria vote ranged from 34.17 percent in the 6th section (based on flood-stricken Bahía Blanca, strangely enough) to 54.02 percent in their stronghold of the 3rd while the extremes for ALLA were 28.55 percent in the 3rd and 42.12 percent in the 5th (based on Mar del Plata). And that is probably enough number-crunching for today.
But before closing the book on Buenos Aires Province, it remains to be said that not only a legislative branch which sessions so sporadically needs reform but also how it is elected. The most obvious anomaly is the 10,233,038 voters in Greater Buenos Aires electing 17 senators and 33 deputies while the other 4,143,554 elect 29 senators and 59 deputies. But it is also worth asking why the province has 135 districts when there are only 23 cities with over 50,000 inhabitants outside the 43 districts of the 1st and 3rd sections – streamlining the 92 inland municipalities to approximately that figure of 23 might be worth a thought.
Space limits the rest of this column to questions awaiting answers in the rest of this month. The most common is whither the dollar with the shock of confidence from Donald Trump’s massive assistance apparently starting to fade already – there will be country risk while there is political risk kept going by scandals amid an atypical meltdown with the macro-economic numbers in better shape than in most crises but a general downturn (admitted by Milei) induced in part by the successes. Whither the Congress and provincial governors and has Milei gained dollars but lost the farmers with his “here today, gone tomorrow” export duty elimination stunt? Will Kicillof’s new image as future president be a self-fulfilling prophesy or counterproductive? And will Milei be self-correcting or self-destructive over those political errors costing him Buenos Aires Province – will he be leaning towards Mauricio Macri (embittered by PRO’s futile sacrifice in last month’s election) or the toxic asset of his sister Karina? Among many other questions.
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